Gordon Freeman
Dr. Gordon Freeman is the main protagonist of the Half-Life series. He is a theoretical physicist who is forced to defend himself and the human race against hostile aliens and other enemies following an experiment gone wrong. In the process, he becomes an almost legendary resistance hero, eventually becoming one of the leaders of an uprising against the alien invaders. History Background A native of Seattle, Washington, Freeman harbors an early interest in theoretical physics, such as quantum mechanics and relativity. His earliest heroes are Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Richard Feynman. He has no dependents and is a graduate of MIT, having earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. His thesis was titled Observation of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Entanglement on Supraquantum Structures by Induction Through Nonlinear Transuranic Crystal of Extremely Long Wavelength (ELW) Pulse from Mode-Locked Source Array (the behavior of large stuff {Supraquantum Structures} relative and related to each other {Entanglement} after a very short duration {Mode-Locked} "Extremely Long Wavelength Pulse" by an arrangement {Array} of crystals with an atomic number greater than 92 {Transuranic}, without coming into physical contact with the structures in question {Induction}) (essentially about the teleportation of matter through the use of extremely dense elements). After graduating from MIT, Gordon travels to Austria, and observes a series of teleportation experiments conducted by the Institute for Experimental Physics in Innsbruck. Eventually, he becomes disappointed with the slow pace of teleportation research in academia and begins to search for a job outside the education sector. By coincidence, Freeman's MIT mentor Dr. Isaac Kleiner has taken charge of a research project at a government-owned, integrated research facility known as the Black Mesa Research Facility and offers Freeman a job. He accepts, hoping that at least part of the immense funding would go towards civilian applications of astrophysics and quantum computing. At the start of Half-Life (on May 16, 200-), Gordon Freeman is 27 years old, and has been working, for a while, at the Black Mesa Research Facility, located somewhere in the New Mexico desert. There he owns a Level 3 Research Associate position, is accommodated in the Level 3 Dormitories in the Black Mesa South Wing, alone in room 309. He is assigned to the Anomalous Materials department doing nuclear, subatomic, and quantum research. Despite having obtained a Ph.D. from the prestigious MIT, the laboratory work that the player actually does as Freeman (pressing a button and pushing a cart) does not require any intellectual expertise at all. Barney Calhoun pokes fun at this in the beginning portion of Half-Life 2, when Freeman performs similar "technical" assistance (pushing a switch and attaching a fallen plug back into a socket). Barney then goes on to joke that Gordon's MIT education "really pays for itself." During their time at the facility, Freeman and Calhoun would compete with each other to be the first to retrieve Dr. Kleiner's keys whenever he locked them in his office in Black Mesa (apparently a fairly regular occurrence) without resorting to conventional means. This is reputedly where Freeman learned to make use of ventilation shafts to infiltrate rooms and buildings. Indeed, Gordon and Barney crawled through numerous ventilation shafts in Half-Life and Half-Life: Blue Shift respectively. Half-Life On May 16, 200- at 8:47, Freeman starts his tram ride from Level 3 Dormitories at Black Mesa, he is 30 minutes late. Arriving at the Anomalous Materials department he and his team perform an experiment on sample GG-3883 in Sector C's Anti-Mass Spectrometer. The experiment goes wrong and triggers a Resonance Cascade. As a result, the space-time continuum is ruptured, allowing alien lifeforms to enter the Black Mesa facility. They immediately start killing any humans they can find. Freeman finds himself hunted by two groups: the invading aliens and later the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit, a military cleanup team that has been sent to contain the situation, by silencing aliens and surviving personnel alike. Freeman manages to survive the chaos, impressing the few surviving scientists and security guards with his acts while quickly becoming the HECU's top priority target. After numerous challenges, and after eliminating countless aliens and soldiers, Freeman is eventually transported by a few surviving Lambda Team scientists to the alien homeworld of Xen, where he manages to eliminate the alien "leader", the Nihilanth. Upon recovering from his final encounter, Freeman is finally confronted by the mysterious G-Man, who has been observing Freeman from a distance throughout the entire game. The G-Man shows Freeman several locations throughout Earth and Xen, before finally offering him a choice: either agree to work for him and his mysterious "employers," or be left to die on Xen without any weapons and surrounded by hostile lifeforms. Half-Life 2 assumes that Freeman chooses to accept the G-Man's offer of employment. Half-Life: Opposing Force In Opposing Force, Adrian Shephard witnesses Gordon teleporting to Xen in the Lambda Complex, and any attempts to follow him through the same portal will result in a "temporal paradox" which sends Shephard falling through Xen's void and ends the game. An "Employee of the Month" picture of Gordon can also be seen in one of the offices visited. Half-Life: Blue Shift Gordon is seen four times by Barney Calhoun during the course of Blue Shift. Barney sees Gordon waiting for the tram on a ledge which Barney passes by. A few moments later, Gordon can be seen riding by. He is also seen heading towards the HEV storage area through a surveillance camera. Lastly being dragged to a trash compactor by a pair of HECU marines. Half-Life: Decay Although never actually seen in Decay, Gordon is mentioned several times throughout the course of the game. First by the first security guard to be met, who says: "The big guy was pretty excited today when he came in earlier. He was talking about the new guy, Dr. Freeman." Dr. Richard Keller also mentions "Dr. Freeman is running late today, again." He also questions Freeman's skills, stating he does not understand what Isaac Kleiner sees "in that boy." Furthermore, the HECU soldiers are also heard screaming "Rot in hell, Freeman!", "Ha! Ha! We've got Freeman!" or "Freeman is on the move!". Freeman's bedroom in Level 3 Dormitories can be visited; on his nightstand can be seen a copy of the book "The Truth About Aliens" (by "RH", a nod to Gearbox's Rob Heironimus), also owned by Barney Calhoun. Half-Life 2 Half-Life 2 begins with the G-Man speaking to Gordon, waking him from an apparent altered state he put him in at the end of Half-Life. Like the ending of the original game, the scene is somewhat inexplicable and psychedelic, with the G-Man's face in extreme close-up fading in and out of visibility over backgrounds representing scenes from the original Half-Life as well as scenes Gordon will visit in the course of Half-Life 2. The G-Man delivers a typically cryptic speech, commenting that "the right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world," and concludes by telling Freeman to "wake up, and smell the ashes." According to the Half-Life 2: Episode One story page, the G-Man kept Freeman "in stasis far from Earth, thought, and time itself" for "nearly two decades," which sets Half-Life 2 at 202-. It is also implied by Eli Vance that Freeman did not physically change during his stasis, in the words "My god man, you haven't changed one iota," said in Black Mesa East. Freeman then wakes up on a train with two Citizens being "relocated" to City 17, and as a Citizen himself (thus also wearing Citizen clothes). One Citizen remarks that he did not see Freeman get on the train, implying that he was brought onto the train in the middle of its journey. Freeman quickly learns that Earth has been conquered and occupied by the trans-dimensional Combine empire. He soon meets up with Barney Calhoun and Alyx Vance, and eventually joins the Resistance against the Combine. During the course of the game, Freeman battles the forces of the Combine in order to free humanity from its grasp. Already famous for his role in the Black Mesa Incident, Gordon quickly develops a legendary reputation among Earth's surviving human populace, who begin to refer to him by messianic titles such as "The One Free Man." Shortly after his arrival, and having killed a significant number of Civil Protection troops whilst attempting to escape City 17, the Combine designated him Anticitizen One, a title that indicates the individual posing the greatest threat to their empire. After slaying scores of Combine soldiers and leading an assault against the Combine stronghold of Nova Prospekt, Gordon eventually sparks a full-scale rebellion against the Combine domination, in which he becomes a prominent combatant. Gordon infiltrates one of the Combine's footholds on Earth, the City 17 Citadel, and destroys its teleporter core by detonating the dark fusion reactor, rendering the Citadel inoperable. Although caught in the reactor's explosion along with Alyx Vance, Gordon is rescued by the G-Man at the last second, who tells Freeman that he is impressed with his work and has "received several tempting offers for his 'services'." The G-Man finally informs Freeman that, rather than offering him "the illusion of free choice", the G-Man has taken the liberty of choosing for him, and deposits Freeman back in stasis until he is needed once again. Thus, Half-Life 2 concludes just as cryptically as its predecessor did. Half-Life 2: Lost Coast In this cut level, Lost Coast, Gordon is lost somewhere from the main coast he was traveling down and is dispatched by an old fisherman to clear out a Combine staging area being used to shell a nearby town, St. Olga. Gordon starts off the map appearing at a dock and talking to the old man who explains what is needed of him. Gordon proceeds to fight his way up a mountain path, engaging Combine forces as he goes. After considerable fighting, Freeman makes it to a former monastery where the artillery platform is located. After destroying the mechanism, he is ambushed by multiple Combine soldiers and a pair of Hunter-Choppers. After clearing the area, he rides an elevator back down to the dock where he started. The old man congratulates him and the mission ends (the old man states that Gordon is turning fuzzy around the edges, just moments before the mission ends). Half-Life 2: Episode One Half-Life 2: Episode One rejoins Gordon and Alyx as they attempt to escape from City 17, doomed by the destruction of the Citadel's dark fusion reactor at the end of Half-Life 2. At the beginning of the episode, the G-Man appears once more to Gordon, but this time, he is interrupted by the appearance of a group of chanting, purple-glowing Vortigaunts, who take Gordon and Alyx away while blocking the G-Man's path. The G-Man appears most displeased by this development, and responds by scowling and darkly stating "We'll see... about that!" Gordon regains consciousness under a pile of rubble and is found by Alyx and Dog. It is quickly revealed that the only way to escape the Citadel's explosion, which would obliterate virtually all of City 17, is to contain the Citadel Core which would stall the structure's detonation long enough for an escape. Gordon and Alyx attempt to do so, discovering in the process that the local Combine forces were deliberately trying to overload the Citadel's reactor in order to send a distress message to the Combine Overworld since the teleport core had been destroyed in Half-Life 2. The Combine apparently consider this an acceptable outcome, considering the damage the Citadel had already taken; the subsequent explosion would destroy all of City 17 and much of the surrounding countryside which has been all but lost to human Resistance forces. Gordon and Alyx avert the destruction for a few hours and manage to escape the Citadel with a copy of the distress message and meet up with Barney and other survivors. The pair eventually escape City 17 via an evacuation train as the Citadel goes critical. Evidently, the Combine message is successfully transmitted while several Combine Advisor pods escape from the Citadel at great speed. The train carrying Freeman and Alyx is still close to the city and is hit by the shock wave as the Citadel is destroyed. Their subsequent fate is revealed in Episode Two. Half-Life 2: Episode Two Episode Two begins almost directly where the previous episode ended. The train Gordon and Alyx were escaping on was caught in the shock wave from the Citadel explosion and derailed. Gordon and Alyx crawl out and begin to make their way to White Forest, the Resistance base where Eli Vance, Dr. Kleiner, and Dr. Arne Magnusson are waiting for them, encountering many obstacles on route. Early in the journey, Alyx is severely wounded by a Hunter and only survives through the aid of several Vortigaunt allies. Alyx is saved through the use of a miraculous larval extract that Gordon retrieves from the Antlion hive. The G-Man briefly reappears to Gordon revealing that Alyx was under his watch as well - that he had "appraised" her and "plucked her from Black Mesa". He requests that Gordon safely escort her to White Forest as repayment for his own survival without explaining the reasons. He then proceeds to whisper to the unconscious Alyx an instruction to relay the message "Prepare for unforeseen consequences" to her father (this refers to the Resonance Cascade in the original Half-Life). Once Alyx recovers, they make their way to White Forest. The journey is far from smooth, as Gordon is required to travel through a Headcrab-infested mining settlement that was used as a rebel outpost in order to retrieve a car to be used to make travel much faster. Then, on the road, the two encounter a radio tower and Alyx decides to send a warning about Combine forces they had witnessed heading in White Forest's direction. They linger for too long, however, and are ambushed by Hunters. They later encounter a Combine Advisor in incubation who almost kills them when they destroy its life support but escape before being chased by a Hunter-Chopper into another rebel outpost. Gordon is then required to deal with a Combine Autogun while Alyx and the rebels repair their car. The Combine then set up a force shield ambush at the White Forest Inn where Gordon and Alyx are outnumbered and surrounded but manage to fight through. Finally upon arrival at White Forest, Alyx gives Dr. Kleiner the data packet she retrieved from the City 17 Citadel before its destruction and Gordon is enlisted to help defend the base from an unexpected Combine infiltration. The data reveals the existence of the Borealis, an Aperture Science vessel thought to have been lost and containing some sort of advanced portal technology that Dr. Kleiner insists should be used against the Combine while Eli, haunted by the Black Mesa Incident, insists upon its destruction. After Gordon destroys a Hunter and Strider assault force in order to protect Dr. Magnusson's rocket launch, Dr. Magnusson is able to use the data in his satellite which, using the old Black Mesa Array, is able to shutdown the Combine Superportal before it could open fully, which would have allowed a second Combine invasion. As Gordon and Alyx prepare to depart for the Borealis, two Combine Advisors rip through the base and kill Eli. Fortunately Dog reappears in time to rescue Alyx and Gordon from the same fate. The episode ends with Gordon looking over Alyx weeping over her father's body, with the possibility that the Combine have now learned everything about the Resistance, the Borealis, and, debatably the G-Man, through Eli. Personality and skills As a silent protagonist, Gordon does not say a single word during the entire Half-Life saga. This is most likely an intentional choice, so that he is not regarded as a separate character outside of the player's influence. Since the start of Half-Life, Valve has made sure that the player's and Gordon's experience are one and the same. An example of Valve's player strategy is shown during the scene in Eli's lab. Investigation of certain props (most notably the newspaper board) triggers Eli to give some explanation to their meaning and history. Although quite proficient with weapons and explosives, Freeman had not actually handled any weapons until some cursory training at the Black Mesa Research Facility's Hazard Course (aside from the butane-powered tennis ball cannon he constructed at age 6). What separates Gordon Freeman from other games' heroes is that he is a scientist – a rather unlikely kind of hero when compared to more traditional video game characters such as Duke Nukem, or soldier types in many other games, such as the Doomguy or the Master Chief. Gallery Category:Valve Characters Category:Half-Life Characters Category:PC Debut Category:All Characters